There is nothing more destructive to the story than a DM temper tantrum, which explains why players have such enthusiasm for causing them.

(Also, for the benefit of readers who check out the comic but don’t read the rest of the site: I want to point out that I was interviewed on Fear the Boot. Tune in to hear some behind-the-scenes info on the comic and a bit about myself and my experiences playing D&D.)

My personal favorite, this one. All the expressions are nothing less than perfect.

This’s the game master’s nightmare. After all the effort you put in the making of an NPC, they’re just going to kill him. They won’t want to hear the dialogue you’ve written for him, instead: “Does he look wealthy? I’ll attack him, let me roll.”

The Voice of Saruman was always one of my very favorite chapters in the book. The BBC audio version did a great job of dramatizing it. I thought the movie was lacking here, but I still enjoyed the scene.

I’m surprised to see that Leggy’s d20 has a “1” on it. I thought his only went down as low as 15 or so.

Very nice strip. I give it four walking sticks (out of a quiver of little walking sticks).

Awesome. Just awesome again. “THWAP!” I love it. Maybe we’ll get a “BIFF” or a “BOFF” next time!

Shamus, you’re so right about DM’s blowing their top. We had an impromptu session not to long ago, where our DM had about 20 minutes to prepare. Somehow we failed to realize this was not the most appropriate time to go rail jumping. We did anyway.

DM: Asking for the third time, “Are you SURE you don’t want to get off the barge to investigate the wounded and bleeding orc standing on the shore in front of the burning mill?”

US: “Nah. We’ll just keep going until we get to town.”

DM: Points to one of the players. “It’s your mill!”

Player: “That’s okay. I’ve got lots. I can always rebuild.”

We ended up having to fight monsters at least 6 levels our senior and getting our rears handed to us. Burnt. On a plate. With arrows in them.

And Chaotic characters aren’t? What about the players who think “Chaotic Neutral” means “Batshit Insane”, or that “Chaotic Evil” means “Complete Psychopath”?
It doesn’t matter what alignment the characters are, if the player is a prat they will be a pain to deal with.

‘Hahaha, awesome as always. Long time reader, second time poster. That was awesome, I’ve showed this to my dm and he just about bust a gut because we had just done something similar a session or so ago. My whole group loves this script and its awesome how much we can relate to it. Kudos.

Lol! “Lawful stupid”, I got to remember that one! It somehow reminds me of Spaceballs and that one line from Dark Helmet that goes “So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.” Not sure exactly why though.

I’m curious why you chose to use images of Saruman and Wormy from TTT, looking out over the assembled orc army, if I’m not mistaken, rather than on top of the tower, where they stood in the actual scene.

I am surprised to see the Lawful Stupid joke…that has long been a running joke among my friends and I. Usually as our take on the stereotypical paladin who uses his honor in place of reasonable thought.

Carl: There were just a lot more images available of the two on the balcony. In RotK, Grima doesn’t appear until the end, we only see low-angle views of him, and he’s never beside Saruman, so it would have been hard to convey the “you missed” joke in a way that made sense.

On top of that, the thing where Saruman was at the top just makes no sense. He’s a hundred yards above them and yet they have a conversation as if they were just a few feet away. They should have to shout their heads off to be heard. The characters on the ground are looking up at a fouty-five degree angle, which means they are staring at the side of the tower far below Saruman. Just nonsense.

At our last session, the players were arguing a bit because we had a monster try to parlay and surrender. We had just about finished off a salamander after we managed to dismiss the huge elemental it had along. It wanted to surrender and promised to give us it’s treasure and bail back to its home plane. Some of us (including me) wanted to kill it anyway because we didn’t think we could trust it. A few other players wanted to let it live, and I thought they were being stupid or roleplaying their goodness too much. The whole party is sort of chaotic “goodish”.

The good players won out and the salamander kept its word.

I was shocked. I mean, it makes objective sense for an itelligent monster to give up if it values its existance, but how often does it actually happen in D&D without it biting the players in the ass sometime later?

“I was shocked. I mean, it makes objective sense for an itelligent monster to give up if it values its existance, but how often does it actually happen in D&D without it biting the players in the ass sometime later?”

Ah, young grasshopper, you are *totally* underestimating the length of later! I’d guess anywhere from 2-3 months…real time. After all, your GM has all the time in the world to come up with something worthy! And it may not even be the salamander itself that bites your party (literally or figuratively). If the GM is being really creative, you may expect something off-the-wall that only involves the salamander as a peripheral player in the plot.

Or maybe, just maybe, the players or someone they care about will end up in its power! Imagine the squirming…

A really expert DM would have the salamander do something minor but significant for them later on, rewarding the party for their mercy rather than punishing them for it – that’s the sort of thing that helps shape a party’s responses.

The players are so right here, too — this is another case of what works as a story (or an unconventional game where Theoden’s a guest PC and Gandalf’s clearly a high level PC (not NPC) played by someone the other players trust not to scene hog (too much)), just doesn’t work in this game.

“So, you want us to just sit here while Gandalf and this other white wizard talk, and then the entire denoument comes down to stuff between them? I don’t think so.”

First time to post. I’ve discovered your site recently and been going through your archive. Repeatedly. And yeah, I’ve infected a co-worker with your work. We are SO going to get in trouble in work for this.

Even with all of the carefully thought out dialogue between the DM, PCs and NPCs, my favorite panels are the WTF?!? speechless expressions from something totally unexpected.

Interesting podcast btw. I hope you can come up with an idea for another series for when this one is over. Something original that you can publish without legal issues, but not a repeat of this one. You definitely have our attention.

Why would you waste the lives of grunts by letting the guy who sent ’em after you live? He’s clearly more evil, or evil on a larger scale, than the guys you just killed, and if they deserve to die, he does too!

BTW, Shamus, first time poster, long-time lurker. Your strips are brilliant, and I look forward to any and all of your future work!

Well of course they’re right. They may be impatient and inattentive, but they’re not stupid. That said, one would expect lawful characters to want to capture the villain, list his crimes, and have Theoden sentence him to death. Not just shoot him without provocation during parlay. (Obviously if he chooses not to come quietly, then you can shoot him, but at this point all he’s doing is talking)

They’re not Lawful Stupid, they’re Chaotic Stupid. One old campaign I played saw a bugbear surrender to the party, give up his (mostly worthless) treasure, tell all he knew about evil monsters in the area, and still get whacked because he just couldn’t be trusted.

At this rate I’m thinking when they get to Aragorn’s wedding Legolas is going to look around and ask, “How many guests are here?”
“So that’s about…what, 3 xp per guest at our level?”

To be fair tho, “Lawful-stupid” has made an appearance in more than one game I’ve played, and everyone who said it thought it was original at the time.
(I’d like to give “Randy” (of earlier DMotR comments fame) credit for being the first person I ever heard use that phrase)

Heh, I think I have a great idea based on our greedy, impatient players.

Our intrepid party meets up with Frodo and Sam in Mount Doom. Aragorn steals the ring. When the DM tries to explain why it’s a bad idea, Aragorn cites the extreme lack of loot in this campaign, especially magic loot.

First Gollum, now Grima? What’s next? Are we going to find out Lego ACTUALLY killed Denethor with a one-in-a-million extreme range bowshot when Den jumped off Minas Tirith before he hit the ground? LMAO.

Now I have the Weird Al Yankovic song “Trigger Happy” stuck in my head…

Heh, this totally reminded me of a DVD I have, this movie titled “The Gamers.” At one point the party is ambushed by a group of forest bandits, and while the bandit king is monologuing, the party’s archer just shoots the bandit king in the neck. I remember the response of the DM being “God dammit.”